Marco Rubio’s Social Security privatization lie, and the email that proves him wrong

On Face the Nation on Sunday, U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio continued his sprint to the middle, soft-peddling his support for raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 (he said he favored keeping Social Security just as it is, but “tweaking” the retirement formula in the coming years, whatever that means…) and — there’s no kind way to put this — simply lying about his stated support for privatizing the program for younger workers.

The campaign has obviously decided that Social Security privatization, which is favored by both Rubio’s tea party movement backers (whom he also distanced himself form on Sunday, refusing to classify himself as a tea party candidate…) and the Club for Growth, which has endorsed him. And this past week, Rubio’s spokesman, Alex Burgos, said the candidate “hasn’t seen” any reports of him supporting the privatization of Social Security, including the one from this site. Allow me to help them out.

Here was my inquiry on February 3rd of this year, regarding Marco Rubio’s view on Social Security privatization, and Mr. Burgos’ on the record response. I was asking Burgos to respond to Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s call to turn Social Security over to the private sector and cutting benefits, so again, the question was specifically about privatizing the program:

And in case that’s hard to read, my question was “The Club for Growth has endorsed Mr. Hensarling’s idea on privatizing Social Security. Can you tell me what Mr. Rubio’s position on that is? Thanks!”

And again, here’s the response:

And Rubio has said the same thing to Florida reporters. On the record.

Here is what the club for Growth, which again, has endorsed Mr. Rubio (along with Sharron Angle, Ken Buck and other radical privatizers,) has to say about Social Security:

Privatize Social Security? Hell Yeah!

Ahead of November, Democrats are pulling out the old Social Security demagoguery card. From the POLITICO:

With many Democrats running scared from their party’s handling of the economy and health care reform, they’ve returned to an old reliable campaign theme in the home stretch: attacking their opponents for threatening Social Security and Medicare.

“I will not allow these programs to be jeopardized or destroyed,” said Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) when he was endorsed by the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans.

Most Republicans are running away from the Social Security issue. They’ve probably been told by establishment handlers to never defend “privatization” or personal accounts.

Baloney.

Fiscal conservative candidates should embrace it. While Americans in retirement or approaching retirement would stay in the current system, younger workers should have the option to invest a portion of their money in financial assets other than U.S. Treasuries. These accounts would be the ultimate “lock box” – they would prevent politicians in Washington from raiding the Trust Fund. The truth is that taxpayers bailout politicians every year thanks to Social Security. Congress and the White House spend more money than they have so they steal money from Social Security to help pay for it. That needs to stop and there is no responsible way of doing that except with personal accounts. These accounts would also be personal assets, much like a house or a 401k account. If you die, you can pass it along to your heirs. With the current system, you can’t do that. You have no claim on that money even though you may have spent a lifetime paying payroll taxes.

And Rubio also favors raising the retirement age, so non-wealthy people can continue doing sometimes back-breaking labor into their dotage (at which time they’ll have to pray that Wall Street hasn’t gambled away their Social Security “private accounts.”) He has said so explicitly, including saying he supports the Paul Ryan “roadmap”, which includes … wait for it … privatizing Social Security (and Medicare.)

Rubio has indeed done an outright flip-flop on his positions, both on privatization and raising the retirement age. But his past positions won’t go away, just because Democrats in Florida choose to let him slide.